Questions to ask Sojourner Truth

Who she was

She was born Isabella Baumfree around 1797 in Ulster County, New York, enslaved by a Dutch-speaking family; Dutch was her first language. She was sold several times as a child and spent about sixteen years enslaved by John Dumont in West Park. Late in 1826 she walked away with her baby daughter Sophia, before New York's emancipation law freed her on 4 July 1827. In 1828 she sued to recover her son Peter, who had been sold illegally to Alabama, and won.

On 1 June 1843 she took the name Sojourner Truth and set out as a travelling preacher. She dictated her Narrative (1850), spoke at the women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio in May 1851, settled near Battle Creek, Michigan, met President Lincoln in October 1864 and worked with freed people in Washington. She died in Battle Creek on 26 November 1883.

First, the speech everyone gets wrong

Ask most people what Sojourner Truth said and they will answer “Ain't I a woman?”, spoken in a Southern accent. That version was published by Frances Dana Gage in 1863, twelve years after the convention, and it changed her words and her voice. The only account printed at the time was by her friend Marius Robinson in the Anti-Slavery Bugle on 21 June 1851. It does not contain the famous refrain.

So in an interview, the honest question is not “Why did you say Ain't I a woman?” but “What did you actually say at Akron, and how do you feel about the way Mrs Gage retold it?” Nell Irvin Painter's Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol (1996) tells the full story of how the legend grew.

Questions about slavery in New York

• 1. People think slavery was only in the South. What was it like in Ulster County, New York?
• 2. You were sold at about nine, with a flock of sheep, to a man who spoke only English. What happened when you could not understand him?
• 3. John Dumont promised to free you a year early, then broke his promise. Why did you leave the way you did?
• 4. Why did you walk away with only your baby, and not your other children?

What the record says: her Narrative (1850), dictated to Olive Gilbert, describes the cellar where her family slept at the Hardenbergh house, her sale to John Neely around 1806 for 100 dollars together with a flock of sheep, and the beatings that followed. New York's gradual emancipation law of 1817 set 4 July 1827 as the date for adults born before 1799 to go free. She left Dumont late in 1826 for the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, who paid Dumont for her remaining months.

Questions about the court case for Peter

• 5. How did you learn that your son Peter had been sold to Alabama?
• 6. How did a formerly enslaved woman with no money take a white man to court?
• 7. What did you find when Peter was returned to you?

What the record says: selling an enslaved person out of New York was illegal by then. With help from Quaker neighbours and a lawyer, she brought the case in the Ulster County court in 1827 to 1828 and won Peter's return. The Narrative says she found scars on his body from beatings in Alabama. This is one of the earliest cases in which a Black woman won such a suit against a white man in an American court.

Questions about faith and a new name

• 8. Why did you choose the name Sojourner Truth in 1843?
• 9. Your visions of God were at the centre of your life. How did they begin?
• 10. In the 1830s you lived in a religious commune in New York that ended in scandal. What did you learn from that?
• 11. Why did you join the Northampton Association in Massachusetts in 1844?

What the record says: she left New York City on 1 June 1843, Pentecost Sunday, saying the Spirit had called her to travel east and speak the truth. The Narrative describes the commune of the self-styled prophet Matthias and her success in a slander suit after she was falsely accused of poisoning there. At the Northampton Association, a cooperative community, she met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass.

Questions about the speaking years

• 12. What did you say at Akron in May 1851, and why did you speak at all?
• 13. You could not read. How did you prepare a speech?
• 14. In 1858 at Silver Lake, Indiana, men claimed you were not a woman. How did you answer them?
• 15. You and Frederick Douglass sometimes disagreed in public. About what?
• 16. Why did you sell photographs of yourself?

What the record says: at Silver Lake she bared her breast to the hall to shame the hecklers, as reported in the abolitionist press. Treat this with care and focus on the insult she was answering. In 1852, at a meeting in Salem, Ohio, she is reported to have challenged Douglass's despair by asking whether God was dead. Her carte de visite photographs carried the line “I sell the shadow to support the substance.”

Questions about war, Lincoln and land

• 17. What did you and President Lincoln say to each other on 29 October 1864?
• 18. What work did you do with freed people at Freedman's Village in Arlington, Virginia?
• 19. In Washington you made conductors let you ride the streetcars. How?
• 20. Why did you ask Congress for land in the West for freed people?
• 21. In 1867 you said Black women must win their rights at the same time as Black men. Why?
• 22. You spoke on into your eighties. What did you want people to remember?

What the record says: Lincoln signed her autograph book, the “Book of Life”, “For Aunty Sojourner Truth”, and dated it 29 October 1864. In 1865 she pressed a streetcar company in Washington to obey the new rule against excluding Black riders, and had a conductor who injured her arrested. In 1870 she began circulating petitions for land for freed people in the West. Her 1867 speech to the American Equal Rights Association argued that if Black men got rights and Black women did not, the men would be masters over the women.

Sample answers from the 1851 report

These lines come from Marius Robinson's report, the account closest to what she said. Use them, not Gage's.

For question 12, on women's strength:

For a question about whether women have the minds for equal rights, use her reply about intellect, which ends: “why can’t she have her little pint full?” (same report).

For question 22, or about the pressure on powerful men:

For question 16, use the caption from her photographs: “I sell the shadow to support the substance.” (cartes de visite, 1864 onwards).

What she could not answer, and how not to play her

• Speaking from 1851, she cannot know of the Civil War, Lincoln, or the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
• She was not called Sojourner Truth before 1843.
• She never lived in the Deep South. Do not give her a Southern accent or Gage's dialect; she spoke English learned as a second language, with a Dutch accent that people noticed.
• Lines that begin “Well, children, where there is so much racket” come from Gage's 1863 version. If you use them, say so.
• She would be astonished by her bust in the US Capitol, unveiled in 2009.

Rehearse with care

Practising aloud helps you hear whether a question is clear. You can try your questions on an AI recreation of Sojourner Truth on Yuga, by voice or text. It is built from her Narrative and the historical record and speaks as a New Yorker, not in Gage's dialect. It is still a recreation, not her, and it can be wrong. Cite Robinson's report and the Narrative in your project.

Where to read her words

• The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850), free on Project Gutenberg. Later editions add the “Book of Life” with letters and reports.
• Marius Robinson's report in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, 21 June 1851, reprinted in most modern collections and biographies.
• Frances D. Gage's account, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 2 May 1863, to compare with Robinson.
• Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol (1996).

For checking any famous line before you use it, see how to check if a quote is real.